Council supports Women’s Home tax credit application in split vote

A divided City Council on Wednesday formalized its support for the nonprofit Women’s Home to build an affordable apartment development in Spring Branch.

“You can tell everyone around the entire horseshoe is struggling with this,” District A Councilwoman Brenda Stardig said in a final plea for her 16 colleagues to respect her stance to oppose the project in her area.

Only four council members — Michael Kubosh, Robert Gallegos, Oliver Pennington and Mike Laster — voted with her. Read my full story about the debate that divided Spring Branch residents and the historical reasons for their fears the project could inhibit the area’s revitalization.

The city’s Housing and Community Development Department and Mayor Annise Parker asked the council to support the tax credit application because the Women’s Home agreed to reserve some units for homeless women with children, a key need in Parker’s efforts to end chronic homelessness by providing permanent supportive housing.

Paula Paust, executive director of the Women’s Home, said she was relieved by the vote because the state tax credit program “is extremely competitive.”

“This was critical,” she said. “Without this resolution of support, our application would not have had a chance.”

The vote strengthens the Women’s Home’s low-income tax credit application to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, which will make the final award decision. For a description of the program, read this.

The proposed project on the corner of Jacquelyn and Hammerly would seek single mothers and their children to fill about 80 two-and-three bedroom units built around a courtyard with a playground and kid-friendly green space. Many residents are likely to be former clients of the Women’s Home’s alcohol treatment program in the Montrose area, income-eligible applicants who will walk through the doors and families referred by Houston groups that assist homeless women.

Spring Branch Super Neighborhood groups disagreed about whether to support the project. Stardig and several other residents shared concerns about adding more apartments to an area already dense with multifamily units and the inflexibility of tax credits requiring below-market, affordable rental rates for at least 15 years.

“It’s a struggle between what’s in people’s hearts and the long term vision for the district,” Stardig said after the vote. She said she would work with the Women’s Home, whose leaders had invited her to continue their conversations.